Wine collecting is widely practiced today and consumers, collectors, retailers and manufacturers need practical and aesthetically pleasing means for storing and displaying their wines. Responding to this public interest, the current market for wine racks is thriving, and there is much to choose from regarding cost, size, stack-ability, practicality and pleasing aesthetics.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,854,590 (John Topping Dolby) and 6,722,501 B1 (Ping-Fang Sen) describe wine racks with unusual and pleasing designs to enhance their aesthetic value, but these designs do not employ an optical illusion to further add to their aesthetic, amusement and novelty value.
There is available on the market today a holder for a single bottle of wine (see: http://www.moillusions.com/2008/01/chain-wine-bottle-holder-illusion.html) manufactured by welding a large chain in such a fixed shape as to form a base which supports a portion of the chain which ascends above the support surface and ends with a loop for inserting the neck of a bottle of wine. Because an observer assumes the chain to be flexible, this holder creates the illusion that the bottle and the part of the chain above the support surface are suspended unsupported in space. However, this welded chain bottle holder is not a practical means of storing a bottle of wine, and it can only hold a single bottle. Furthermore, the illusion effect is not particularly puzzling or startling. However, its established presence in the market for wine racks does illustrate the public's interest in startling and unusual means for displaying bottles of wine.
Magicians have long used the principle of mounting mirrors inside boxes, both small and large in size, to hide small objects, parts of human anatomy such as an arm or a head, or even entire people and animals. The principle is very old and even patented for certain specific uses (see Adams, U.S. Pat. No. 4,023,794).
Advertisers have often employed optical illusions that use light reflective surfaces in their displays to attract customers (see William Albert Burns U.S. Pat. No. 1,680,855, A. Trippe-Furst U.S. Pat. No. 1,721,014 and A. G. Steen U.S. Pat. No. 1,740,842).
Manufacturers of toys, games and novelties have employed optical illusions that use light reflective surfaces to enhance the amusement value of their products (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,967,953 Shigeru Sugawara, Suzuki U.S. Pat. No. 5,494,217 and Boles U.S. Pat. No. 4,960,274).
U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,161 employs light reflective surfaces to create a “see through” effect utilizing the reflective principle of a periscope. This “see through” effect differs from the effect of an empty interior space, and it has the limitation that, like a periscope, its virtual images all rely upon multiple reflections in multiple mirrors,
None of these aforementioned devices employs mirrors or other light reflective surfaces as part of the design of a rack for storing one or more objects. Furthermore, nothing in the prior art or currently for sale on the market employs the use of an optical illusion created with light reflective surfaces to enhance the novelty, amusement and aesthetic value of racks for the practical display and storage of one or more bottles of wine.